I’ve heard military guys refer to this as the "fuck up and move up" school of personnel management. Which I guess we can modify to "fuck up, help cover the Defense Secretary’s ass from potential criminal charges, and then move up."
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June 20, 2005
Rewarding Failure
Comments
Another interesting promotion:
Air Force Academy Chief to Head The Citadel
Air Force Academy Supt. Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., who took over the Colorado Springs school after a sex assault scandal and acknowledged problems of religious intolerance, is leaving to become The Citadel’s president.
The Citadel is fits his old workplace.
Wolcott has a line worthy of Mencken that I will have to use as a quote for a sig. at some point, and sadly too apropos:
“…when you betray your cynicism, giving credit where no credit is due, it nearly always comes back to mock you.”
Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 20 2005 12:37 utc | 2
Posted by: Nugget | Jun 20 2005 13:37 utc | 3
Can’t resist re-posting this:
Sanchez will probably get the star……….
My unit, in Vietnam was involved in a major operation that lasted about a week. During this operation our company commander made many many bad tactical decisions that resulted in unusually high casuality numbers to our side. The co unwittingly led the company into several pre-planned ambushes and rather than retreat and call in air/arty support, he deemed it more necessary to fight through the set up on the ground. The co also initiated unwarranted attacks against civilian(s) targets in the area so as to inflate his enemy k.i.a. numbers to cover the dispraportionate number of causalties that we were taking. Essentially, this guy was totally out of control in every respect, and had to be outranked by the top seargent several times, not a common thing. Soon after this operation was concluded, the co was taken out of the field (the bounty on his head by this time was unmistakable) and received a promotion to the rank of
light colonel.
……………….because, not so secretly, the military loves leadership that will push up against any and all opposition — and will willingly and knowingly violate all known conventions of law and human decency to accomplish the mission — even if such actions result in the ultimate failure of both the spirit and the fact of that mission. He’ll get the star as long as he keeps his mouth shut and the commander in chief is reelected.
Posted by: anna missed | October 15, 2004 03:13 PM | #
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 20 2005 20:34 utc | 4
Sanchez will probably get the star……….
Well, it looks like you nailed that one.
Posted by: Billmon | Jun 21 2005 3:08 utc | 5
A postscript to that story above.
The co in question, supposedly still in the army, and still does’nt want any former members of the company to know his whereabouts. Have since found out that in that operation, the battalion (my company) suffered its single largest KIA for any day of the whole war. When I returned home, my parents showed me a news clipping of the operation from the local paper (toledo blade) which characterized the operation a big success with something like 130 NVA killed with only light casualties suffered by the US. That really blew me away, because I saw no more than 5 NVA dead, while we had over a dozen — it was bullshit then and its bullshit now.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 21 2005 8:58 utc | 6